Over the last few years social networking and especially Facebook has seen unexpected and phenomenal growth. Everyone is hooked on to Facebook for their every need. People now days find Facebook to be the most convenient mode for promotion of their products, solution to their personal problems or just keeping in touch with their friends. The Facebook content management system is so well made that it allows every one to get what they want.
But the Facebook CMS has some hidden dangers that any open source would have. These dangers make it important that everyone is aware of the shortcomings and brace to use facebook in such a way that minimum hazard occurs. One of the major problems that the Facebook users face is the privacy compromise. As it is quite easy to add features by the Facebook CMS, new features are continuously added to upgrade the networking platform. One of the latest features added by Facebook is the face recognition feature. This feature is quite user friendly as it makes it easy to tag the known people in photo. It means when someone is uploading a photo, the CMS will try to match it with the friends’ faces so that they could be easily tagged. This feature provides a quick access to the friends with similar facial structure. It does compromise the privacy of the friend but Facebook also gives an option whether to tag or not.
Second, the Facebook CMS is designed in such a way that when a user connects with any website or application, his general information will be accessed by the website. The general information includes names of your friends, your name, profile pictures, user IDs, email IDs and any content shared according to the privacy setting of your Facebook account. This will undoubtedly hinder your privacy and you may be flooded with useless mails.
Your computer is put in danger as many phishing mails and spam’s can attack. This may become the heaven for hackers to steal information and use it in offensive way. Sometime back a mail was sent to over 2300 friends of a user inviting them for a Facebook event. They were asked to enter their phone numbers and email ids. This message was supposedly sent through the friend’s account which later came out as a spam. This is quite an easy task for the hackers as the Facebook CMS is an open source and anyone can use it. Thus, one has to be very careful with his Facebook account so that it is not compromised.
Another major problem occurred sometime back when a bug entered and allowed the users to see their friends’ private chats and view the pending friends’ request. This was a big breach of privacy and Facebook ahs to suspend chatting for a few days to rectify the problem. Though Facebook later own up to the folly yet there were many users whose privacy was compromised.
Thus we can say that the Facebook CMS has many advantages but it can also play havoc with your privacy. Therefore, one must be very careful while using Facebook for any important transaction.
